Short answer: no, not as William Bates described it. His core theory (that the eye focuses by squeezing its external muscles, and that relaxing them “cures” refractive error) is wrong. The eye focuses by changing the shape of the lens inside it (accommodation), not by stretching the eyeball. Palming, sunning, “swinging,” and staring at Snellen charts don’t reverse myopia, and reviews have found no reliable evidence that they do.

So if you’re here to find out whether Bates exercises will fix your eyes, save yourself the time. They won’t.

But the reason this question keeps coming up is more interesting than a flat “no,” and it’s worth pulling apart what Bates got wrong from the one observation buried in his work that turned out to point somewhere real.

What optometry says (and it’s correct)

Mainstream optometry and every serious review (Wikipedia’s summary, ophthalmology position statements, the older Elwin Marg review from 1952) reach the same conclusion. Bates’ anatomical model is false. Sunning (staring toward the sun) is genuinely a bad idea and can damage the retina. Reported “improvements” in his patients are explained by things like:

• Learning the letters on a fixed eye chart.
• Squinting or pinhole effects that temporarily sharpen an image without changing the eye.
• Day-to-day variation in refractive state.

None of that is the eye getting less myopic. On the science, the critics are right and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Where Bates accidentally brushed against something real

Here’s the distinction the “Bates is debunked, end of story” answers skip.

There are two things going on in a myopic eye, and they’re not the same:

Axial myopia. The eyeball is physically longer than it should be. Light focuses in front of the retina. This is the structural part, and it’s real. Glasses don’t shrink it back.

Pseudomyopia / accommodative spasm. The focusing muscle is stuck in a near-focus state after long hours of close work, so distance vision is blurry even though the eye’s length hasn’t changed. This is functional and it fluctuates.

Bates was fumbling at the second one. His “relaxation” wasn’t the mechanism he claimed, but the underlying idea that chronic near-focus strain degrades distance vision isn’t crazy. It’s just that his fix (palming, mystical relaxation) didn’t address the actual driver.

So what does the evidence actually support?

The lever that has real data behind it is defocus. Specifically the sign of the blur hitting your retina.

Animal and clinical research over the last two decades shows the eye’s axial length responds to the direction of chronic defocus. Too much plus power / hyperopic defocus from constant close work is associated with the eye elongating (getting more myopic). This is the same mechanism behind why myopia-control lenses and low-dose atropine are now standard for slowing progression in kids, that part is mainstream and well-documented.

The behavioral case EndMyopia makes runs from there:

• Reduce close-up strain, and take real distance-focus breaks (the active focus “active focus” habit).
• Use correctly measured differential and normalized lenses instead of one full-strength pair for everything, so you’re not forcing hyperopic defocus all day.
• Reduce lens power gradually as your distance vision clears, roughly on the order of ~1 diopter per year, not overnight, not “in weeks.”

Where’s the honest evidence line? The defocus mechanism and myopia progression in children are backed by real trials. The adult reduction protocol EndMyopia describes is documented across a large base of self-reported user cases and centimeter measurements over time. It is not a large randomized controlled trial, and I won’t dress it up as one. It’s a plausible, mechanism-consistent approach with a lot of anecdotal tracking behind it. A very different claim from “clinically proven.”

Bates method vs. what EndMyopia does

The practical difference is measurement. Bates offered no reliable way to know whether anything changed. If you can’t put a number on your blur distance today and compare it in three months, you’re just guessing. Same trap that produced Bates’ false positives.

The honest bottom line

Don’t do Bates. The theory is wrong, sunning is unsafe, and the exercises won’t reverse myopia.

If the question underneath your question is “can adults do anything about their eyesight besides stronger lenses every year,” that’s a fair question with a more careful answer: the defocus mechanism is real, the direction of the effect is documented, and a slow, measured reduction is what the behavioral case actually supports. Not magic. Not fast. Not guaranteed.